


Believe me not, and yet I lie not

by scarletseeker113



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: F/M, Fake Dating, WHICH IS THE BEST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 02:05:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2211678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletseeker113/pseuds/scarletseeker113
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ben and Bea figure out the ‘Love gods’ plan, but everything still ends up the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Believe me not, and yet I lie not

Ben pounds on the door three times. He takes a step back, dances around on the porch and then pounds again. “Come on, Beatrice,” he mutters, and then the door swings open.

Her hair is braided back, and she’s in a tank top and soft sleeping shorts.

“Ben, what are you doing here?” She manages to make it sound like an accusation.

“Is anyone else home?” he asks urgently.

She shakes her head and he brushes past her without a word.

“Yeah, sure, come on in,” she says sarcastically and he waves his hands in front of him erratically.

“No time for greetings!” he says. “Where’s your laptop?” 

“In my bedroom, why?”

“I have to show you something.”

“Ben,” she starts, sighing.

“Beatrice. This is important. Like monumentally important. Like life or death important.”

“Oh, my God, fine.” She leads the way up the stairs and sits at her desk. She picks up the bowl macaroni she’d apparently abandoned to answer the door and swivels to face him.

“Okay,” Ben leans over her and types youtube.com into the URL bar. “So I saw your last video-”

Since when do you watch my vlogs?” Beatrice asks.

“I always watch your vlogs. We’re friends.” He shrugs. “In the ‘I hate you and will insult you at every opportunity’ way. But also in the ‘we could murder someone together and get away with it’ way.”

“That’s weirdly accurate.”

 “Yeah, it was the one where Ursula, Hero, and Meg were talking about how much I liked you.” Beatrice pales dramatically. “But the thing is, Pedro, Claud, and Leo, _LEO,_ were talking about how much you liked me the other day where I could ‘accidentally’ listen in.” He makes the air quotes and everything. “So I spend the next couple hours freaking out about how you like me, and then I watched your latest vlog and _viola_! Everything was made clear. Watch this.” 

Ben clicks on the Makeup Bloopers video and Bea groans. 

“I’m not watching this.”

“Trust me,” Ben says seriously.

And then it cuts from Hero and Claudio being gross to everyone- and it is literally everyone but her and Ben- assembled in front of the camera.

“Oh, my God,” Bea says.

Ben watches her reaction, feeling fulfilled at the anger she is displaying.

“ _Love gods?”_ She spits. “How can they think that they can just control our lives like this?”

Ben sort of collapses on the bed. “What are we going to do?” he asks.

“Murder them?” Beatrice suggests. “God, I can’t believe even Leo is in on this.”

Just as the video ends the front door opens.

Beatrice looks up at him. “Shit, if they find you here, they’ll think they’ve won!”

“Beatrice!” Hero’s voice comes from the stairs.

“Hide, hide,” Bea snaps her laptop shut and shoves Ben into her closet.

There’s the sound of springs like Bea has just thrown herself onto her bed. The door opens. “Oh, hi Hero,” Bea says. It sounds forced.

“Hey, um, is that Ben’s car outside?” 

Ben can practically feel the death glare that he is receiving from Bea right now.

He makes a snap decision and opens the closet door. “You’ve caught us,” he says dramatically.

“Oh, um,” Hero is at a loss for words.

“Hero. Ben came over and he-”

“I asked her on a date,” Ben interrupts.

Bea glares at him.

“And she hasn’t given  in to my devilishly good looks quite yet, so if you could give us a minute?” He all but pushes her out of the room.

“Oh, of course,” she says as the door is closing in her face.

“No!” Bea hisses as soon as it’s safe. “Absolutely not, it ends here, we tell everyone that we know.”

“No, let’s mess with them, they wanted to mess with us.”

Bea glares at him. “No, I’ll just tell Hero that I said no to the date.”

“But then I look like an idiot for asking you out.”

“You _are_ an idiot.”

“Bewhwhwhw” he shakes his head in frustration and her name gets mangled in the movement. “We’re fake-dating as of now. Then we can get a party together, play the video of the lurve gods and make them suck it cause we knew the whole time.”

Bea stares at him a moment. “Fine. But only because I want to see the look on their faces when we tell them.”

“That’s the spirit!” he says. He moves towards the door. “Date, Friday night, I’ll pick you up at six.”

*   *   *

Their ‘date’ ends up the two of them at a burger joint. Ben orders pickles on his (“That’s disgusting.” “You’re disgusting.” “Incredible comeback.”). Beatrice orders two large fries in addition to her burger, (“Fries are literally the best food on earth. Potatoes deep-fried in awesome. How can you not like that?”).

They spend the evening working on their game plan. Two weeks, they decide. That’s how long they’ll fake-date. Then they’ll bring together the group and tell them how idiotic they are for thinking that this would ever work.

Ben is driving her home later, and Bea is fiddling with the strap of her bag. She’s not sure how to bring this up, but she knows it has to happen tonight.

Ben pulls up next to her house and cuts the engine. He moves to get out, to walk her up to the door like a nice gentleman but she puts a hand on his arm before he can.

“Wait.”

He turns and looks at her questioningly.

“We’re going to have to kiss in front of them,” she says. “For them to believe.”

“Just a quick peck, we’re not going to be making out in front of them,” Ben says.

“Yeah, I know. But I’m really awkward at first kisses,” Beatrice says. (She’s being really awkward right now, but she pushes the thought out of her mind.) “So we can’t have our first kiss in front of everyone.”

“Oh,” he seems incapable of saying anything else. He’s frozen in place.

“Right now, Ben,” she says sharply, giving it the tone of the insults she normally gives him. “We’re going to kiss right now.”

“Yeah, right,” he squeaks as she leans closer to him.

Their lips meet and it’s _incredibly_ awkward. Like, so intensely awkward that Bea can’t even look at him as she gets out of the car.

He walks her up to the porch and there’s a twitch of curtains.

“They’re watching,” he hisses.

Bea nods, thinking of how Hero must be texting Claudio right now that they were home.

“Well, um, goodnight?” Ben says.

Beatrice glares at him to stay in place, and then she reaches up and kisses him again.

Ben’s hands land awkwardly on her waist. When she leans back from him she says, “Goodnight,” and then bolts into the house and closes the door, leaning against it while sighing deeply.

“How’d it go?” Leo’s voice comes from the kitchen.

Beatrice jumps, feeling so dirty and violated that her cousin is seeing her after just _kissing Ben._

“Fine,” she says.

“Just fine?” Hero asks from where she’s sitting on the couch. Bea glares over at her. 

“Just fine,” she snaps, and stomps up the stairs.

She can hear Leo and Hero laughing behind her.

*   *   *

School is the worst. It is the actual worst. Ben tries to hold her hand but she just extracted it muttering, “I’m not a hand holder.”

“Thank God, me neither,” he mutters back.

Occasionally he’ll swing his arm around her shoulders and lean in. “Whoo hoo, we’re dating which means that I whisper things in your ear now I guess.”

She smiles.

“Smile like you mean it, Bea.”

She frowns forcefully.

“Smile or I’m going to kiss you right here in the middle of everyone.”

She pushes him away. “You do that, you’ll get slapped,” she says.

Pedro grins at them. “Look at the happy couple,” he teases them.

“We are very happy,” Ben says. He slings an arm around Bea’s shoulders again and looks at her. “Aren’t we, snookums?”

Bea adopts her fake girl voice, “Oh absolutely, love bug.” She laughs obnoxiously. Then she pushes him away and stands up. She pulls her trash from the table and walks away.

She’s mad.

In the background she can hear Pedro, “Sounds like she’s right pissed at you.”

Then there’s the sound of Ben’s voice in the background.

She wants to kiss him again. Like properly kiss him. But last time she had to take a shower to feel clean again after he touched her. (Seriously she felt so gross and violated.) She wants to kiss him again, but she also doesn’t want to kiss him again. Which makes _no sense._

She’s angry.

*   *   *

“Hey,” Ben catches up to her on the way to English. “Sorry about what I said at lunch. It was really wrong.”

Beatrice doesn’t even look at him.

“Bea,” he touches her shoulder tentatively. “Bea, I’m really sorry. It was a dickish thing to say. I would never kiss you if you didn’t want it.”

Beatrice barely glances at him as she walks into English, leaving him behind.

She gets home later that day to find a bowl on her unmade bed. It has a card next to it. 

_A chocolate salad from your dickwad boyfriend._

It is filled with all sorts of chocolate, milk and dark. (No white chocolate. Frankly Beatrice is kind of offended that that is even considered chocolate at all. Ben must remember her rant about it two summers ago.)

She grabs the bowl and settles down to watch some Community with her totally healthy salad.

*   *   *

She manages not to kiss him for a week. But then Pedro has a party and they’re standing on the porch, and it seems like the right place for a kiss. Ben must think so too, because he’s the one who leans in, traps her against the house and kisses her softly.

When he pulls away there’s this weird look in his eyes. Like he sees her differently now.

Anyway, everyone cheers, and Bea flips them off. She presses her face into Ben’s shoulder so she doesn’t have to look at them. He just slides his hands around her waist and holds her until she pulls away.

Ben’s kind of a good fake boyfriend. 

Bea tries to scrub that thought from her mind, but to no avail. She .... kinda likes having Ben around. And .... touching him sometimes.

 *   *   *

Wednesday night she texts him. _I don’t want to do homework._

_Me neither._

_Fake date?_

_Be there in ten._

He is there in ten minutes. He’s holding a season of Game of Thrones, a bag of mini Reeses and two cans of rootbeer.

Beatrice grins and resists the urge to step forward to hug him. She waves him in.

They spend most of the night discussing how the adaptation differs from the books, and how most fantasy series should have a show to capture the real essence of the world.

Beatrice eats way too many of the Reeses, and apparently falls asleep.

She wakes up to the credits. Mortifyingly she is laying with her head against Ben’s chest. Like they are actually dating. Like they are people who fall asleep on each other now.

She sits up and avoids looking at him.

“I have to go, my parents are texting me,” Ben says.

“Yeah,” Beatrice says. She grabs the wrappers from the Reeses and puts them in the trash. She stands awkwardly by as he pulls his DVD out of the player.

He stands up. “I’ll see you tomorrow at school?” he says.

She nods.

He hesitates, but then steps forward and hugs her. She’s stiff and awkward at first, but then just gives in. Something about him is very comforting to her. He lets go and walks to the door. “See you later love,” he says.

He’s already gone when Beatrice says, “Love?”

*   *   *

Here it is, the day they have been waiting for. Everyone is gathered in Hero’s living room and Beatrice and Benedick are standing in front of them.

“We have an announcement,” Beatrice says.

“You’re getting married!” Pedro says, grinning.

She glares at him.

“No,” Ben says. “Jokes all on you guys because you _suck_ at keeping secrets.”

“We figured out that you were trying to get us to like each other,” Bea explains a little more. “We haven’t actually been dating these last couple of weeks.”

Hero looks shocked. “But...”

“So much for the lurrvveee gods,” Ben says dramatically, and collapses into a nearby chair, looking really irritated.

“So you don’t like each other then,” Pedro says.

“No, no we’re just friends. Friends,” Beatrice says weakly.

“Really?” Hero says, with a mysterious grin on her face. “Then what is this?” She holds up a piece of paper that Bea has been keeping in her room for a few days.

Ben lunges for it, and Hero gives it to him gladly.

“No,” Bea reaches for it but to no avail, Ben is holding it high above her reach and reading it, grinning.

“Oh and look at this, a note of Ben’s,” Claudio says, pulling a piece of paper out of Ben’s pocket, and handing it to Beatrice.

“Oh ho!” she says and opens it.

Ben lunges for her, trying to grab the paper, but Claudio pulls him off of her until she can properly read it.

_Bea, I think we should keep what we’re doing and just remove the ‘fake’ part of the title._

_Bea, what if we just dated for realzies?_

_Bea, I actually like you._

_Bea, I’ve decided to go and live in the jungles of South America. I’ll see you again never._

_I’m just going to DIE AND NEVER ACTUALLY DEAL WITH THIS._

Beatrice turns around and looks at Ben. 

He holds up the paper in his hand. “So,” he says. “Amazing, how we wrote things which are just so ... not true.”

Beatrice can’t even speak just yet.

Benedick puts the paper in his pocket. “Alright, alright. I guess I’ll be your _boyfriend._ Only out of pity mind you,” he waggles a finger at her.

Their audience seems to collectively gasp.

“How could I say no?” Beatrice says. “Although, it should be noted that I only agree because apparently,” she taps the paper in her hand, “you will _die_ if you cannot date me. And how can I deprive your parents of their only son, however disappointing he is?”

Ben grins. “Shut up,” he says, and leans forward to kiss her.

Everyone cheers.

Beatrice breaks away from him. “I think we should really stick to kissing in private where no one can cheer.”

“Yeah, sounds good. Just one more,” he says.

She laughs as he kisses her again.

“Benedick the boyfriend,” Pedro says loudly.

Ben turns to him. “You know, nothing could put me in a bad mood today,” he says.

Pedro rolls his eyes at him. 

“Pedro you’ve seemed sad lately, why don’t you get a girlfriend?” Ben grins as he says it.

“You’re an idiot,” Beatrice says, and she twists out of his arm and goes to put some music on.

“She’s right, you’re an idiot,” Pedro says. “Just don’t be too much of an idiot yeah?”

Ben looks over at where Beatrice is being questioned by Hero and Meg and nods. “On my honor,” he says.

Pedro rolls his eyes at him and walks away to talk to Balth.

Ben pulls Beatrice away from her friends. “Let’s make this a dancing party,” he says.

“I can’t dance,” Beatrice says.

“No one can really dance,” Ben says. “It’s all about confidence, which we both have plenty of.” He twirls in a circle and wiggles his shoulders.

Beatrice laughs at him.

Meg joins in with the dancing pretty quickly, and pulls Hero in with her. Eventually everyone is jumping and wiggling in the living room, looking like idiots. But they’re looking like idiots together.

(And then Beatrice pulls Benedick away to her bedroom so they can get some actual alone time while they’re actually dating which actually means a lot of kissing. And it’s actually awesome.)

 

 


End file.
